Kat Bailey wrote a great article on why grinding sucks. Different views on the game design trope, where Bailey also lists some of the more sucessful implementations of grinding.
Much more at the link: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/down-with-grinding
At its core, grinding is filler. It dangles the promise of a meaningful rewardbetter skills, new weapons, special itemsin exchange for drudgery. It's a trick designed to keep players engaged without having to produce new and interesting content.
Its roots are in the days of 8-bit RPGs, when developers had limited resources and memory. In forcing players to grind through monsters to get to a high enough level to defeat a boss, designers were able to arficially extend playtime. Moreover, they were spared from having to design unique and interesting encounters, as victory became more of a matter of brute force.
As games have evolved, grinding has become less about making up for memory shortages and more about getting players to spend money. MMORPGs were practically founded on grinding for endgame loot, which is a function of the desire to keep people subscribed. In Madden 18, solo challenges having grown into a multi-headed monster in which you have to grind through dozensif not hundredsof rote missions to get non-auctionable rewards. It's a trick designed to bore you into giving up and springing for microtransactions. And it works.
A new and particularly pernicious example can be found in Shadow of War's endgame. In order to get the best ending in Shadow of War, you need to recruit lots of powerful orcs, which necessitates a time-consuming slog that can be mitigated (surprise, surprise) by purchasing loot boxes.
Sadly, I fear that the the recent trend toward loot boxes will only encourage developers to lean harder on grinding as a substitute for substantive and interesting content, as we're seeing in Shadow of War. And that will only lead to less interesting games overall.
But whether as a crutch for early designers or a way to pump up monetization, grinding will always be the least interesting form of game designa mindless bit of padding that trades boredom for illusory rewards. It's indicative of either poor balance, a lack of imagination, or worse, a determination to gear the design toward forcing players to shell out more money. It is the definition of compromise.
Much more at the link: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/down-with-grinding